Almost 40% of american adults are obese.
42.8% of those aged 40–59 (42.8%)
35.7% of those aged 20–39 (35.7%).
41.0% of those aged 60 and over (41.0%)
Above picture – Prevalence of obesity among adults aged 20 and over, by sex and age: United States, 2015–2016
Obesity: BMI was calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, rounded to one decimal place. Obesity in adults was defined as a BMI of greater than or equal to 30. Obesity in youth was defined as a BMI of greater than or equal to the age- and sex-specific 95th percentile of the 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts
Among both men and women, the prevalence of obesity followed a similar pattern by age. Men aged 40–59 (40.8%) had a higher prevalence of obesity than men aged 20–39 (34.8%). Women aged 40–59 (44.7%) had a higher prevalence of obesity than women aged 20–39 (36.5%). For both men and women, the prevalence of obesity among those aged 60 and over was not significantly different from the prevalence among those aged 20–39 or 40–59.
There was no significant difference in the prevalence of obesity between men and women overall or by age group.
Age-adjusted prevalence of obesity among adults aged 20 and over, by sex and race and Hispanic origin: United States, 2015–2016
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That will happen when someone else is paying for your food.
Obesity epidemic is not entirely due to lack of willpower. Government recommendations to replace fat with carbs has been utterly wrongheaded.
Obesity is due to poor education and food legislation. I’ll skip the legislation part (look up for yourselves how much more permissive are US food laws compared to other countries, the processed food lobby seems invincible), but let’s have a look at education: as I mentioned many times before, there’s an issue in the US with the distribution of education, which is more skewed compared to other places. This is visible also through obesity rates: in Asian countries (where the worst educated are still decently educated) obesity rates are low, then comes Europe, then North America (where educated and wealthy folks are quite fit while the uneducated poor are quite fat).
Rather than giving out advice on diet and stuff, a government should have the priority to get good education to disadvantaged people and thus it would reduce healthcare costs over a few generations. To make it nicer, it could also start forbidding food companies to make borderline-poisonous food, but that’s another story.
The poor of Asia have low obesity rates because they are better educated than USAians?
You don’t think that hard physical work, less access to rich food, and transport that relies on walking and biking might not have something to do with it?
Vittorio, at least in the US, poverty is strongly correlated with poor impulse control. Births to single women are much higher among high school dropouts, for example, than college graduates.
Impulsive people make impulsive choices when it comes to food, too.
I totally agree, this happens everywhere: poor self control is extremely common among people with little education. What I see happening in Asia and Europe is a sort of “social education” about food, people telling other people that too much of certain foods may have negative consequences (call it local culture if you like it better); I don’t see that happening in the US or any other North and South American country, it seems as if people were more socially isolated in former colonies, less peer-to-peer knowledge transfer; I don’t have data on this, it may as well be just an impression.
What I do have data about is teenage pregnancies: it seems to be endemic in UK, US and Eastern Europe, but under control in Western Europe. Here’s a comparative chart with some nations and the aggregate datum for the EU-28 (which includes Eastern European countries where teenage pregnancies are more common): https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/media/images/79434000/gif/_79434861_live_birth_rates_624gr.gif
One may be tempted to assume it’s due to a different race mix (the assumption being that non-whites are less educated so teenage pregnancies are more common), but if you look well at France or Sweden they have similar (if not higher) percentages of non-white residents than UK/US and less teenage pregnancies. So, my hypothesis is that Anglo-Saxon* and Eastern European countries have a more skewed education distribution (higher degree of inequality), which is kinda witnessed by a higher degree of income inequality and all the other variables related to education like obesity, teenage pregnancies, addictions, etc…
*Australia, New Zeeland and Canada have all higher teenage pregnancy rates than Western Europe, but lower than UK/US.
Energy balance is more significant in the aggregate than macros, this has been shown in every clinical study that tries to prove that carbs will make you fat and fat won’t. Carbohydrate intake is a diabetes risk, but it doesn’t make you fatter than fat at equal caloric intake. Nevermind the fact that fat is more energy dense so you’re talking about eating less mass for the same energy intake.